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Saturday, 17 January 2015

The Blog Fantastic 034: The White Dragon review (Unread 003)

The Dragonriders of
Pern is one of the series I’ve written the most about as part of my Blog
Fantastic project. It’s a cheat since it’s pretty clearly a science fiction
series but my blog, my rules. The series has a shit ton of dragons in it and
that’s enough to quality it as fantasy for me. The White Dragon is the third and final volume in the Dragonriders of Pern trilogy but it’s
the fifth Pern novel to have been
published. I’ve been reading them in publication order so I broke up the
original trilogy with the first two volumes of the second (or concurrent?)
trilogy focusing on the Harper Hall. As such, the main plot of The Dragonriders of Pern continues with
this volume but it doesn’t bring a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.
Certainly it wraps up several elements of the story so far but it also poses
many new questions.

The trouble with the Pern
series is that it’s not something you can easily adapt into a trilogy of books.
The problem is that Anne McCaffrey’s stories are essentially slice of life. There
are no villains, instead the books has a few antagonists. With Pern she’s developed a colonized planet
and the Dragonriders of Pern trilogy
focuses on the rediscovery of dragonriders’ role in Pernese society. The first
and second books are mostly about discovering the fictional world and it works
well because the reader learns along with the characters. It makes for a very
interesting read because the world McCaffrey created is rather fascinating. The White Dragon has plenty of moments
of discovery and innovation as well but it brings a more balanced approach to
it because we also get several chapters’ worth of everyday life on Pern from
the point of view of several different characters.

Admittedly, The
White Dragon is not a page turner. This has to do less with the subject
matter than it does with the style of story being told. The book doesn’t deal
much with a plot aside from the ongoing mission to better society. While the
dragons often make us think that this should be a fantasy series, the
storytelling approach and the creation of modern Pernese society definitively
prove that this is a work of science fiction. As such, it uses very few tropes
of the fantasy genre and despite resembling a feudal societal system and having
(at best) Renaissance level technology. Unlike a lot of fantasy that are set in
a medieval time period, Pernese usually do not act like characters as seen in
those kinds of fantasy novels. These people are truly of another planet even though
they originated from Earth. They act differently because their entire culture,
planet, and way of life are different than that of Earth, regardless of the time
period.

All of these elements are demonstrated very well in The White Dragon. For a Pern novel, it excels at combining
Pernese politics of Holds, crafthalls, and Weyrs along with the exploration of
the planet and additional discoveries of the people’s past. It incorporates
several main characters from the previous four books (Menolly and Piemur were a
nice surprise) into the larger narrative. It even had a main character which
got his own coming-of-age story which focuses the story a little more than it
would have if McCaffrey would have treated the story as an ensemble cast. The
additional focus on Jaxom and Ruth was appreciated, even though Jaxom is annoying
for the first half of the book.

The real treat of the book is Ruth, the titular white
dragon. He’s delightful. He was impressed with Jaxom during Dragonquest (we got the same scene from
Menolly’s point of view in one of the Harper Hall trilogy books) and at the time
nobody though the dragon would live. Ruth has some form of mutation as there
has never been a white dragon before. Additionally, he’s smaller (about half the
size) than other dragons. This book starts a couple of years after the end of Dragonquest with Ruth and Jaxom doing
very well. By the end of this book he’s been alive and has thrived for several
years. Along the way he’s demonstrated special abilities and superior intellect
that other dragons do not have. He’s unique in more than one way but what makes
him such an engaging character is that McCaffrey gave him more personality than
she’s given any other dragon up to that point.

Unfortunately I don’t have as much praise for Jaxom. He’s
very annoying at first, mostly because he doesn’t realize how lucky he is. He’s
the Lord Holder of Ruatha Hold and a dragonrider. He has a strong sense of
entitlement and I found it pretty irritating. His love for Ruth and his
willingness to work for the good of the planet are his best qualities. His
willingness to work hard for the good of Pern sometimes feels like he’s just
showing off, but not always. He keeps a rather huge and important secret to
himself for several months. It’s a considerable accomplishment for him and Ruth
but the knowledge of it could easily have caused friction between Holders and
the Weyrs. His love for Ruth and Ruth’s love for Jaxom are one of the most
engaging elements of the book. They help each other to better themselves and
their unyielding support is inspirational, even amongst other dragonriders.

It’s pretty refreshing to have McCaffrey writer such a
loving relationship as its one of the things she struggles with. Relationship and
sexuality as written about in Pern
novels are often one of the weakest parts of the books. The same can be said of
The White Dragon. Unfortunately, she kind
of warps the purity of Jaxom and Ruth’s love during one scene of the book. Most
of the sex in the book is related to Jaxom. Early on he uses his title as Lord
to seduce a young woman named Corana from one of the surrounding regions of
Ruatha Hold. At one point in the story Jaxom witnesses a mating flight with a
green dragon and while wondering why Ruth doesn’t want to mate with the green
dragon he gets incredibly turned on by the mating fligt. He flies to Corana and
has sex with her in the middle of a field and discovers that Ruth piggy backs
on his sexual encounters via their psychic link. Let me say that again: Ruth
doesn’t have interest in sex with dragons but he likes to participate (albeit
not physical, thank you for not going there McCaffrey) in Jaxom’s human sexual
encounters. That’s kind of fucked up. Yet, as odd and disturbing as that
concept is I have to give credit to McCaffrey that she created the world of
Pern and in many ways it’s still a unique series well over forty years after
the publication of Dragonflight. This
odd and disturbing sexual encounter is something unique to Pern.

Thankfully, sexuality doesn’t appear too often in this
book and there are several moments of genuine (and non-creepy) love in the
book. Lessa and F’lar aren’t creepy at all in this volume and there is a
beautiful moment between Robinton and Menolly. It was loving and caring, while
also a little tragic, and I was genuinely moved. I was partially annoyed to read
it because it proves that McCaffrey can write about human relationships in an effective
and nuanced way yet she more often freaks me out with her strange ideas about
sexuality. It’s unfortunate that the true depth of such a moment is completely
lost on people who haven’t read Dragonsong
and Dragonsinger before reading
this book.

I have to say that of the first five Pern novels The White Dragon
is likely the best one. It’s more balanced compared to the previous books.
There are more good elements while also having less bad elements than the rest
of the series. The bad elements prevent it from rising to the level of the great
fantasy or science fiction novels of all time but there is enough here to entertain
and intrigue readers. I look forward to see how it compares with Dragondawn as I have fond memories of
that one but so far, this might be the strongest Pern novel. Next up is Dragondrums
and I’m really looking forward to that one because Piemur changed quite a bit
between the end of Dragonsinger and
the time we meet up with him in The White
Dragon.

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Shared Universe Reviews

Welcome to my blog. I like to write about comics, books, movies and more. Feel free to comment and share you thoughts. If you'd like me to review a comic or if you're interested in an interview, send me an e-mail at mario.jf.lebel@gmail.com.